


we wear red so they don't see us bleed

by unicornpoe



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1940s, Artist Steve Rogers, Flirty Bucky, Fluff, M/M, Mentions of blood/injuries, Moving In Together, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-World War II Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers In The Moonlight, grumpy steve, they flirt in jail, they met during a fight, you construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-28 14:02:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19813789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicornpoe/pseuds/unicornpoe
Summary: Bucky sits on the hard wooden bench, back against the cold wall, and stares across the holding cell at the other man.He glares back. Blood on his chin, in his teeth, in his hair; a nasty bruise coming up over the bridge of his nose and around his puffed-up eye. Knuckles split. Sharp chin jutted out at a defiant angle. The collar of his shirt is ripped, and the garment gapes across his clavicle, showing a bruise running up the side of his neck as well.Small, Bucky thinks; all ragged edges and razor-sharp angles. But strong.And pretty.And stupid.***Bucky and Steve spend one night in a holding cell together. They leave together, too.





	we wear red so they don't see us bleed

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to another episode of "this is what eden wrote instead of sleeping." i hope you enjoy!
> 
> title from "trouble" by valerie broussard

Bucky sits on the hard wooden bench, back against the cold wall, and stares across the holding cell at the other man. 

He glares back. Blood on his chin, in his teeth, in his hair; a nasty bruise coming up over the bridge of his nose and around his puffed-up eye. Knuckles split. Sharp chin jutted out at a defiant angle. The collar of his shirt is ripped, and the garment gapes across his clavicle, showing a bruise running up the side of his neck as well. 

Small, Bucky thinks; all ragged edges and razor-sharp angles. But strong. 

And pretty.

And stupid. 

“Well,” Bucky says, and blood leaks from his own split lip, mixing with the words that rest on his tongue. He shoots the other man a weak grimace into the gloom of the poorly-lit space, his jaw aching from a punch that had landed a bit harder than expected. “I guess I oughta introduce myself.”

The man furrows his brow, and the frown turns into a wince as he shift on the bench, one too-big hand coming up to hold his ribs gingerly. There’s blood all over his shirt. Bucky isn’t entirely sure that it’s all his own. 

“Don’t see why. Doesn’t seem necessary,” says the man, and his voice is lower than Bucky would have expected, like it doesn’t really fit his tiny body. 

Nothing about him fits. He is a thousand pieces of someone else, all cobbled together into one. Bucky can’t stop looking at him. 

“Sure it is,” Bucky says. There are three other men in the cell with them, but they’re asleep—unconscious or truly slumbering, Bucky can’t really tell. Either way, the smell of booze is strong in here, although it could just as easily be wafting off his own clothes as anything else. Things had got a bit blurry there at the end of that fight, and he’s pretty sure someone’s beer ended up on him somehow. “Seeing as how we’re gonna be spending the night together, and all. Unless you got somebody who’ll come get you out? A dame, or something?”

The man is staring at him still, staring like Bucky’s worth looking at it, and it makes the surface of Bucky’s skin shiver.

“No,” says the man at last. “No dame.”

And that hadn’t really been the question, had it—but Bucky feels his heart speed up anyway, feels the pulse ticking excitement-fast beneath the bruised layers of his skin. 

Bucky smiles. Wide and slow. 

“Bucky Barnes,” he says. 

The man doesn’t smile, doesn’t smile, doesn’t smile; Bucky wonders if he ever does. Bucky wonders if he ever has cause to. Bucky wonders why those slim hands are so quick to fight, flying through punches like swallows. 

“Steve Rogers,” he says, head tipped back against the cool gray wall, eyes electric blue slits in his beat up face. 

“Steve Rogers,” Bucky repeats, rolling the name around in his mouth before releasing it. It suits him, he thinks, laughing a little under his breath: short and strong. “Nice to meet you, Steve.”

Steve raises one eyebrow, wincing slightly as the cut at his hairline pulls. A thin, wet trickle of blood runs down his temple. 

“Nice isn’t the word I’d go for, Bucky.”

Bucky crosses his arms over his chest, settling back. “Really? What would you say?”

Steve appears to consider this. Bucky watches, appreciating the view: there’s a window directly above Steve’s head, and a thin stream of moonlight floods in, turning Steve’s pale hair into shades of silver and white. The elegant line of his nose, charmingly bisected by that bump in the middle, catches Bucky’s eyes. 

He’s all sliced up by the shadow of the bars on the windows, divided into sections; black, black lines. 

“Inconvenient.”

Bucky smiles. “Punk,” he says, and is satisfied at the twitch of Steve’s lips, the very, very slight flush that blooms high on his cheekbones. Steve doesn’t shy away from the full brunt of Bucky’s gaze. 

“Jerk.”

The man to Bucky’s right starts with a loud snore, almost sliding off of the thin bench and onto the floor. Bucky stands up and crosses the cell in two long strides, draping himself in clean lines along the section of free bench next to Steve; he pulls one leg up beneath him and stretches the other out, so that their ankles almost touch. 

Turned toward Steve as Bucky is, he can watch fully the sharp, barely-there movement of Steve’s eyes flickering down to their legs, and then back up to the wall across from them. He doesn’t turn to Bucky. 

It’s mostly silent in here. There’s a faint murmur of voices somewhere down the hallway, the quiet, steady tick of a clock hidden from view, the various noises of the men locked up with them—but other than that, nothing. 

“Where’d a guy like you learn to throw a punch like that?” Bucky asks finally, when he’s spent too long staring at the delicate, fucked-up line of this man’s profile, spent too long raking his eyes over and over again down the line of his feather-soft lashes. 

The corner of Steve’s mouth ticks up, just slightly, just a little bit. Bucky wants him to bear that row of bloodstained teeth like he had back in the bar, a vicious, joyous snarl. 

“That’s somethin’ guys like me just gotta know,” Steve murmurs, cutting his gaze down to the few inches of bench between them—not quite looking at Bucky, but not quite looking away, either. 

Bucky’s chest feels hot. “Oh yeah?” he asks softly, mouth suddenly dry. 

Steve looks at him. There’s some steel behind those eyes, tough and vulnerable together, just daring Bucky to try something, and the bottom of Bucky’s stomach drops right out through the soles of his shoes. He’s beautiful. 

“You followed me into that fight,” Steve says, changing the topic abruptly, and with an ease that Bucky never could have managed. “You jumped in and helped me—even though I clearly didn’t need it. Why?”

Bucky thinks of Steve, sleeves rolled up to his forearms, elbows back, fists up; Bucky thinks of Steve, how slight he’d looked facing off against the man with his fingers digging into that young girl’s wrist; Bucky thinks of Steve, the way he’d called something up at that man, something Bucky couldn’t hear over the noise in the bar, the way the man had ignored him, the way the girl had been crying; Bucky thinks of Steve, giving the man a fair chance to let go, and stepping forward to swing the first punch when he hadn’t taken it. 

Bucky’s feet had moved without his mind consciously telling them to, propelling him fast through the crowd to Steve’s side. Turns out the man had had a few friends with him; turns out Steve needed the help. 

Things had gone wild and blurry after that, too muddled by dodging fists and kicking feet and making sure the girl had gotten back to her friends safe. He and Steve had ended up side-by-side, working almost in unison, and Steve had smiled at him in the middle of the roiling mess, and Bucky remembers it, vivid like a colorized snapshot in the back of his mind. 

And then, after that, the police. Hence the cell. 

“Nobody else was gonna help you,” Bucky says, only telling half the truth. 

Steve’s frown deepens. “I didn’t need help,” he repeats, snappier now. His fingers flex where they’re resting flat on his thighs, and his swollen knuckles bleed crimson. 

“Maybe not,” Bucky concedes easily, and this time he’s brave: this time he lets his leg stretch a little wider, lets his ankle rest on top of Steve’s, lets his smile linger. Steve’s eyes burn a little when they look at him, and it’s good. “But it sure was nice to have it anyway, yeah?”

Steve wipes some of the blood off of his chin with the back of one hand, keeping his eyes locked on Bucky’s as he does, and the slick of blood looks vivid against the pale skin stretched over his bones. He’s all in monochrome, silver and gray and black and white and bright, hot red: like a piece of art, like a thunderstorm. 

“Maybe,” he says, low. He doesn’t move his foot out from under Bucky’s. 

***

They sleep a little. Leaning back against the wall, arms crossed over their chests, eyes closed. Bucky moves his legs, in case one of the other guys wakes up and sees them, but he doesn’t want to. 

He wakes up, and the moon is high enough in the sky that it doesn’t shine directly through their tiny window anymore. Steve is in shadow; Bucky turns his head against the wall, ignoring his stiff neck, and looks at him. 

He looks back. 

They don’t move. It’s not real, Bucky thinks, nothing is real, unless it’s happening under a light. In the cover of darkness, nothing is a fact. 

“Boring in here,” says Steve, tongue flicking out to wet his cracked lips. The phrase is thick with sleep and with pain, a little bit charred on the edges, and Bucky leans in to pick up the sound. Steve is obviously trying to hide the fact that anything hurts, which is stupid; the guy looks like he’s been hit by a train. 

“Mmhmm,” Bucky murmurs, trying to be subtle as he scans Steve’s visible self for any injuries worse than the ones he can immediately see. Steve scowls deeply at him, and Bucky gives a sheepish smile. “What do you do for fun, Mr. Steve Rogers?”

“Fun?” drawls Steve, not moving away as Bucky scoots closer so they can talk just between themselves. “In this goddamn economy?”

That startles a laugh out of Bucky that he doesn’t bother hiding. “Alright then,” he says, and this close he can see a cluster of faint freckles across the bridge of Steve’s nose, only half-hidden beneath the ugly purple bruise. “You got a job?”

“‘Course I got a job, Buck.”

“What is it then, smartass?”

Steve tips his chin up boldly, as if daring Bucky to make fun of him. Bucky wouldn’t dare. “‘M an artist,” Steve says, and there’s something like pride threaded through his words, and it makes Bucky smile. Must be nice, to have a job you’re real proud of. “Do comics, and some advertisements. Fliers for theaters, window displays, that sort of thing.”

Bucky can see it. Those long, nimble fingers; that steady, assessing eye. 

“Doesn’t pay much though,” Steve adds, when Bucky’s smile makes it clear that he’s far from criticizing him. Steve’s shoulders relax a little, and Bucky wonders how many assholes give him shit about his career choice. He’s surprised at how angry that thought makes him. “It’s not the steadiest thing I could be doing.”

“I work down at the docks,” Bucky says, shrugging. It feels plain, after what Steve says. Ordinary. “That doesn’t pay much either.”

Steve tilts his head slightly and his gaze falls to Bucky’s chest, his shoulders, his arms. A very small smile drifts across his lips. Bucky’s face goes hot. 

“Must be a good workout,” Steve says almost absently, and that smile doesn’t fade as he looks up at Bucky again. 

Steve Rogers has got his head in a daze. 

“You live alone?” Bucky asks, speaking through the heat on his cheeks, ignoring the way his voice comes out a bit rougher than usual. 

“Yeah,” says Steve, obviously a little confused, but willing to be strung along. “I live alone.”

“I’ve been looking for a roommate,” says Bucky, and the words spill out of him without his consent, forming faster than he can think. “Somebody to split the cost of a shitty set of rooms with. Just to make things a bit easier.”

Steve scowls again—of course he does. 

“I can get by on my own,” he says, but it’s quiet, like he’s thinking. 

Bucky nods, smiling a little. “So can I,” he says, shrugging again. “But the thing is, we don’t have to.”

They look at one another, quiet. Steve’s bangs are falling across his eyes. 

“I get in a lot of fights,” Steve says finally, staring at Bucky like this should be surprising. “I get mad too fast. I’m sick all the time. I can’t cook.”

“That’s alright, Stevie,” Bucky says, giving into the urge to reach up—fast, maybe sorta scared—and brush Steve’s bangs out of his eyes. Steve raises an eyebrow, but the line of his lips is soft, and Bucky’s heart pounds. “All you gotta do is just shine my shoes, maybe take out the trash.”

Steve smiles. 

***

The apartment is a shithole. It’s small, the walls are thin, there are cracks in the window that Bucky has to stuff bits of newspaper into to keep the chill away. 

Steve beams when he sees it. Bucky beams when he sees Steve beam. 

There’s only one bed. 

That’s just fine. 

**Author's Note:**

> come scream with me about steeb and bonky on [Twitter!](https://twitter.com/unicornpoe)


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